Running for a Long(ish) Time

I've written about a lot of my experiences here. The task of writing about running 15 kilometers in the Istanbul Marathon (a lot of prepositions here, I know) is the first time when I've been really driven to write and not known what to say. Much of what occurred on the course was not an interaction with other humans; it was an interaction with myself. Bear with me.

Before you read any further, you need to look up two words/phrases at my favorite online Turkish-English dictionary, Tureng.com.

• Teşekkürler
• Afiyet olsun

These were some of the first words I learned upon arrival in this country, and I use them at least at every single meal, if not more times each day. Keep these in your pocket for the rest of the read.

When Will I Ever Get Another Chance?

I heard about this marathon while I was at orientation in Ankara. Someone (I'd like to blame John or Dorothy for this, but I can't remember) said, "if you run the marathon or the 15k, you get to cross the Bosphorus Bridge between Europe and Asia." And I thought to myself, "when will I ever get another chance to do something like this?" Touch two continents in one run? The Bosphorus Bridge is usually closed to foot traffic, and the Istanbul Marathon is the one time each year when pedestrians take it back from the endless gas-powered traffic.

If I had known that the folks doing the 8km category would also be able to cross the Bosphorus Bridge, I might have set my goal there. You see, I'm not a runner. Or, I wasn't. But I was aware only that the 15km and marathon runners would be able to cross the bridge and that I needed to do that, too.

Training Up

So I signed up and began to run. I wasn't wholly unfamiliar with the activity: I've been on a city rec soccer team for the past two years: "the Walla Walla Bing Bangs"/ "the Nancies". I've occasionally run in the Bennington Lake vicinity, too. I don't like to run in a gym-- there's too, too much monotony for me there.

Ironically I was running around the track at school, mostly because the material (I'm guessing recycled tires or something more sophisticated-- I'm pretty sure our Physical Education/ Sport department is quite well-funded) was easier on my knees and feet than the asphalt. I knew I'd have to run around on some asphalt before getting to Istanbul, but I was taking that a little bit at a time.

I don't run to music because I'm not enough of a consistent runner to maintain the pace that I want against a shift in rhythm. For the first few weeks, I was running to Jim Dale's audio narration of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

I was hoping to save the last two hours of this incredible story for the marathon.

Stop. Just stop there and imagine. Oh, God, can you imagine? This is me, with my relationship to these books, attempting to have a life-changing experience while listening to the LAST FEW CHAPTERS of The Half-Blood Prince?! I don't know what I was thinking, but if I'd done it last Sunday, I know I would have had tears streaming down my face for the last 2k for both physical and emotional reasons.

But something changed, and it occurred during the disastrous/hilarious Lykian Yolu hike. During the hike, a muscle above my left buttock stopped working, and I developed the most fantastic blisters I've ever seen in my life. I realized during these ten hours that I could do a lot of things that I hadn't formerly expected of myself. I'd gotten to a point where my body was capable of matching my will.

I'm just going to say that after this sentence, some of what you'll read is graphic, gross, and impolite. But these are some descriptors for what occurs when you do things with your body that you haven't done before.

So, I stopped listening to anything (I still haven't finished HP-- I probably will during my next few bus rides into city centre), and the weekend before the race in Istanbul, I ran 16km around the track at school.

For my own sake, I had to make sure I could do it.

Erich estimated for me that if my track is standard (it is), 4 laps around it would be a mile, and 40 laps would be the 10 miles I need to reach a bit over my goal for the Istanbul race.

I ran it in the evening while a bunch of guys were using the field to practice American football.

I'll say here that Turkish men are incredibly affectionate with each other, and it was especially hilarious to watch them tackle each other and see the tackle become a hug and then a hand up. This is not Texas, and for that I am grateful.

I mean, if I'm not going to listen to Jim Dale, I'm glad for those young men who were practicing a sport that's pretty much antithetical to their attitudes about masculinity and each other.

I did the first twenty laps in 45 minutes, counting my laps on my fingers the whole time. Because really, how else am I going to keep track of the laps? In my head? What have I got fingers for, then, if not to count laps? Yes-- I ran around that track as the sun was setting and kept my odd fingers in front of me.

At about thirty laps, the call to prayer began. Too soon! I thought, I'm going too slow! But I maintained the pace that I wanted to keep during the race, and ten laps later I checked my phone: 88 minutes.

I stretched, walked home, drank water, and got on the phone with Nina and Andreas. N and A, you're reading this here for the first time, but I left our Skype call so that I could go lie on my bathroom floor next to the toilet. When I thought I was feeling better, I tried to call Erich.

But then I puked.

I ran the next afternoon instead of the next morning. I did 20 laps at 50 minutes.

I ran a little every day until Friday, when I stretched. And Saturday I stretched.

The Race

Then Sunday, I joined a crowd of about 10,000 people 300 meters away from the Asian-side entrance to the Bosphorus Bridge.

Most importantly to me, I was wearing a shirt that said "Walla Walla" on it. Most importantly to everybody else in the crowd (mostly of a European and British makeup), I was wearing my Vibram Five Finger shoes.

They freaked out in the friendliest way possible.

"Hey lady, are you really going to run in those things?"

"How far can you actually run in those?"

"Don't you need a cushion? Will you be in pain?"

"Have you run in those before?"

"Why are you running in those? What are they like?"

"I have only seen those on the internet!"

I tried to explain that these shoes are really common where I come from, but then some East Coast ETA would say, nonono, we don't do that in Boston, either. We don't do that in DC, in New York. So, I'm gathering that these Five Finger shoes are another West Coast phenom, and that I'm outing myself again (with real pride) by wearing them. I moved away from my States compatriots and made friends with some Turkish fellas and some British ladies who were there with their running club.

I was looking, but before the start I saw only one other person wearing them. After the start, I wasn't paying attention to that.

The Bosphorus Bridge was incredible. It was a clear day for the most part, and the gorgeous waterways of Istanbul stretched to each side of me. And I was moving in a speedy pilgrimage with thousands of other people ahead of me. You know I don't like crowds much, especially at shopping malls, big box stores, and college house parties. But this was different.

I was so happy. I was so excited.

After crossing the bridge, we got to the highway and everybody and their mother took a piss break on the side of the road (well, not this girl-- I'd already taken care of business once that morning because I didn't want to have to stop). I had been running on the right side, so I got a little too up close and personal with the smell of it before I remembered that I could move over.

We were running uphill, which is something I like to do.

Consequently, we were soon running downhill, and this is where my race and my body began to unravel.

When you train, you begin to understand that your body develops certain habits to compensate for what you're putting it through. This is my experience, at least. I can't speak to whether this occurs for other people or if it's even right. So I know I'm about 20 minutes into my run when my rib cage starts doing that thing. And I'm about halfway when the index toe of my left foot begins to feel that certain way.

What I felt, running down that awful hill from 3km to 5km, was a new and incredible pain in my spleen. I slowed down a ton and let a lot of people pass me. That's actually all I experienced for about 15 minutes: feeling pain, slowing down, getting passed. I was almost sure that I would have to stop at the side of the road, that I might not finish. I said to myself, "try to keep going until you have to stop. Don't stop until you have to stop."

Then I got shoved. [This is actually not an infrequent occurrence in a race; sometimes, if you're outpacing someone and there's no other way around hir, it's common practice to push hir shoulder and pass. But this is actually what happened:] I'm running slower than the crowd around me, but I'm trying to maintain at least a person's width distance on all sides of me so that I don't have to get shoved. Suddenly, a force from my left shoulder moves me right and I get a glimpse of this middle-aged man looking at me hard, and he asks, "what are you doing here?!" Then he disappeared and left me to ask the same question.

I am here to finish this race, I said to myself. And I know I can do it, because I've done forty laps before. So I told myself to breathe through the pain in my spleen and speed up when the road flattened out again.

And the pain began to adjust itself to my body and my will, and I began to feel it less.

Almost the first thing I remember seeing when I turned the first corner after the course flattened out was a guy coming out of a break at a Starbucks. One of the attendants was helping him put his number or jacket back on, but I remember thinking, "that guy got a pee break at a Starbucks?! Oh, man, I need to do that!" But the thought took too long, and I was away before I could break at the coffee shop.

I spent the next I-don't-remember-how-long needing to pee really, really badly.

And then there was a blue port-a-potty, and a woman flashing out of it, and my throwing myself into it and not knowing how to lock the door and hoping that I wouldn't be interrupted and exposed to hundreds of people in the street.

And then I was stumbling back out of the port-a-potty, unsure I could run, unsure I could merge back into the human traffic, and then I remembered that my spleen no longer hurt, and that I was relieved, and that I had legs that were still moving properly, and that I was strong.

I sped up, and soon I was on the Galata Bridge with the fishermen.

(I say 'men' because I didn't actually see anyone fishing from the bridge who didn't present as masculine.)

The Bosphorus Bridge was wonderful, but I am in love with the Galata Bridge. I was glad that I got to walk across it on the way home from the race that day because I almost stopped again, this time to observe the many and varied people and soak in the incredible views of the water (lots of boats and ships!). If you ever go to Istanbul, there're many good places to see, but I think the Galata Bridge is the best of them. And it's always open to pedestrians.

Suddenly I was climbing a hill again.

Suddenly I was on cobblestones.

Suddenly I was at Topkapı Sarayı, and I knew I could make it to the finish line in Sultanahmet.

Suddenly we saw the sign for 41km, and I knew I was only a kilometer away from finishing my 15km run.

After seeing "400m", the elderly gentleman running near me said, "Where the fuck is the finish line?!"

And then we were there, and I didn't quite know how to stop running. But I did.

And then some of my ETA friends were calling my name, and they gave me a bag that had these things in it: a medal (for all the participants), another vodafone shirt, a water bottle, a banana, a bar of Ülker chocolate with pistachios.

The Best Part

... was not finishing.

In Turkey, we don't drink our water out of the tap. That's fine for cooking and boiling and washing dishes, but people get their drinking water purified from bottles or, if you're lucky enough to live in Bolu, from the Kokez water fountains.

So I have developed a special relationship with water bottles. I try to keep one around me at all times.

When we were running, the water stations supplied sponges, apples, and bottles of water (not cups like I've seen in other marathons). The runners would swarm to the table, grab an already-opened bottle if possible or an unopened one if the attendants couldn't keep up with the crowd, and drink.

Some of us drank as we ran, some of us would give ourselves a break, but all of us had to ditch our bottles at some point. This was a bit heartbreaking for me, and a little obscene. Most of the bottles were only half-empty when they were thrown to the side of the road.

I saw one lady spectator get hit with a half-full bottle of water.

The road would be wet for tens of meters after a water station, and you'd have to run carefully to avoid slipping on a rolling bottle.

At the last station, I was in dire need of some water.

I was on the outside edge of the crowd, and the attendants couldn't open the bottles fast enough. I wasn't sure I was going to get a bottle, but I was going to try.

I had my eyes focused on one bottle, and my gaze slid up the arm of this attendant until I was looking at his face and meeting his eyes. All of this happened in a second.

He threw the unopened bottle at me, and in surprise and gratitude I caught it, already opening it and back on my way, crying, "Teşekkürler!"

And as I parted from the crowd and continued the last leg of my run, I heard him call, "Afiyet olsun!"